


please don't tell me that we're fine

by Cosmic_Retribution



Category: Homestuck
Genre: "in canon trolls only talk online & don't meet up" hmm... I can't read suddenly I don't know, (and then to lovers), F/F, F/M, [eventual] mentions of past unhealthy equara, brief mention of otc sleeping pill abuse, canon-compliant non-graphic character death, either nogame au or pregame, friends to not friends to awkward estranged friends to friends again eventually, ghost Aradia, let them hang out and be happy, more tags to be added possibly if needed, none actually takes place and it's just in the first paragraphs/doesn't come up after intro, not epilogue-compliant because I haven't read it and don't really plan to, other characters mentioned/will be tagged if they show up or deliver any dialogue, rated teen for a couple swears, redrom aravis as well as palerom arasol bc uhh cant help myself moirails Cute, takes place not long after she becomes a ghost, welcome to f/f rarepair town yeehaw!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-07 03:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18612412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic_Retribution/pseuds/Cosmic_Retribution
Summary: It must be some sort of-- some sense of nostalgia, almost, a feeling of being a part of something you don’t quite understand, belonging to a past that’s tangled up with the collective pasts of the people who miss you. It’s watching the past stretch forward into a future that you’re not yet willing to relinquish. It makes sense now, or it seems to for a moment before the bolt of understanding slips through your fingers like sand in an hourglass: you’re essentially a ghost now, right? You died. And this-- this is your unfinished business.Your fingers flutter over the keys.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s the kind of tired boredom that makes your arms move slow as you reach up to rub your dry eyes for the umpteenth time, the sort that makes the world seem heavy and flat and full of nothing. It makes you want to swallow a fistful of those half-ass over-the-counter sleeping pills that kinda-sorta work in the hopes of passing out long enough for tomorrow to finally arrive, which itself is in the hopes that tomorrow will bring literally anything with it.

That’s irresponsible though, of which you are aware. That would only make more people worry about you than already do. You want to care about that more than you do.

But it’s all nothing anyway; you couldn’t if you wanted to, and at a certain point the draft from the wind howling and growling through cracks and crevices in your hive mixes with the whispers, the sobs, the pleas of the gone, and it’s just static, like that.

_I’m just not here_ , you tell yourself eventually. Nothing is interesting; everything is hollow. There is no point in tomorrow, no value in yesterday, both of which stretch on into blurry, daunting infinites. _How long?_ You ask yourself eventually. You don’t have the answer to that.

Click, click. No interesting games on your husktop that you can occupy your time with, but someone is pestering you incessantly on trollian. You don’t want to talk, you haven’t wanted to for who knows how long, so you don’t answer. You stretch your heavy, heavy arms and lean back, staring up through a crack in your ruined ceiling at the dark, predawn sky above.

You try to catch a few winks after what must be hours of staring and staring. The notifications don’t stop coming. Ping, ping, ping, once more and you think your head is going to burst. But you don’t answer. You’re not even sure why you don’t.

~~~~~~~~

Whether you bid it to or not, tomorrow will always arrive, so you have observed.

You awake at dusk, or a few minutes beforehand. The first thing you do is groan and grumble and curse your past self for being too lazy to haul your useless self to bed as you blink away the night’s disturbing dreams. The second thing you do is experience the vague recollection of needing to get back to somebody on trollian, so you wake up your husktop and pull up the browser and instantaneously you’re smacked in the face by a wave of disgust and bitterness and regret.

_87 messages from arachnidsGrip [AG]_ , the screen reads. You slam your husktop shut.

So you stand up. You dust off your tattered skirt, straighten out your shirt collar. You shamble on into the remains of your mealblock mechanically, open your thermal hull, close your thermal hull. That’s right, you specterous bastard, no food for you. Cool, great, excellent. You catch yourself setting your feet in the direction of your ablution block for a moment as though you’ve not been burned once already; routines are hard to unmake.

You wander outside, try to find solace in the night’s cool breeze, and you find it, for a time. You close your eyes and tune out the static. You sit on the edge of a hill and kick your legs, humming themes from some movies and cartoons you used to love. But you run out of songs you know by heart sooner or later, and wandering around your old digsites just makes you feel sad and hollow, so back inside you go.

You become aware, dimly, that it’s a matter of time until your bitter curiosity gets the best of you and you take a peek at those messages. But you’re still distantly angry at her, so you pointedly decide to do anything else. You sweep the floors and try to tidy up some old debris. You don’t even want to, or need to, but spite is a powerful thing. You wipe down counters and other surfaces, try to straighten up your generic activity block, and pointlessly reorganize the now-unnecessary contents of your nutrient consumption vessel cabinet. You take your hive’s trash out to the rubbish receptacle at the end of the street and for a moment you just stand there staring down the dim road and wondering _how the hell could this possibly be my existence_ before you decide enough is enough, trudge back home, and plunk down in front of your computer.

And you read through them all.

~~~~~~~~

Of course, she had a lot to say for herself, despite it being weeks late, much of it bluster and excuse. (And part of it being the trademark Serket Ramble™ that you expect from her.) Something about a cue ball man making her do it? Hoofbeast excrement, you’re sure.

But there’s also some interesting bits. There’s apology, occasionally bordering on heartfelt, which makes you almost want to raise your eyebrows had you the energy. There’s accusation, most of which makes you scoff and sneer, some of which makes your throat close up with indignation and anger and tiredness. There’s worry and despair and self-pity, sure, and something that makes you snicker a little despite yourself is how she paused mid-rant to send you a meme she thought you would like, as though none of this had happened. Which, first of all: how dare you, you murderous, bastardous _idiot?_ How can you-- how _dare_ you-- act like you’re still friends after what you’ve done? And second: it’s honestly more humorous than you wish it was.

Late in the afternoon hours, when every decent troll is asleep, she devolves from making arguments and rationalizations and two-faced apologies into just. Reciting things she remembers. About you, largely, and things you used to do together. As you force your eyes to read them you wonder at first when she is getting to the _goddamn point_ , but then you realize that there is none.

You remember dully that you’ve allowed everyone to believe you are gone, having been shaken by it all and possessing a lack of faith yourself that your current reality is _real_.

_Remem8er when me, you, Terezi, Sollux and Eridan went to visit l8ke skylark a few summers ago?_ One message reads. _Nepeta was supposed to come too, 8ut Equius was sick, so she wanted to stay with him so he wouldn’t get lonely. It was pro8a8ly the middle of the night 8ut it was so f8cking hot that summer. Eridan tried to teach us how to swim, 8ut Sollux wanted no part of it, and that royal dunce didn’t want to get into the damn water himself. Terezi pushed him in._

_You tried to m8ke sandcastles 8y the shore,_ she writes, _8ut the ground was hard and didn’t stick together well. Still, you spent what musta 8een hours making your little dirt towers and adorning them with sticks, rocks and leaves you found. I thought it looked like fun, the way you were doing it, 8ut instead of saying so I kicked them over when you went to go look at some dead nutcreature corpse Sollux had found._

_I don’t know why I did that,_ she writes.

_ And you wore your hair up in a high ponytail that day, too, with the cute 8lack tank top and a pair of those cut shorts with the corners of the pockets sticking out. I thought you looked really nice, 8ut what I said was something like “decent outfit, for a low8lood loser,” or something equally 8itchy and idiotic.  _

_ I don’t know why I said that.  _

_ L8r, a8out the time we were winding down for the night and getting ready to pack it in and head home, I tripped over a root on the path and scraped up the palms of my hands pretty 8ad. You ran over to help me up, and my glasses had gone flying when I fell. You picked them up, you wiped the mud off the lenses and handed them 8ack to me, and I wanted to thank you. I wanted to say that it meant a lot to me how consider8 you were, and that I had a lot of fun hanging out with you, I wanted to say sorry a8out your dirt castles, I wanted to s8y… I don’t know   _

_ 8ut what I ended up saying was “I don’t need your help.”  _

_I don’t know why I said that._  

_ I know it’s not enough, 8ut I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d kept my 8ig mouth shut.  _

You close your husktop. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y'all like this so far. Special thanks to my friend tz who doesn't even like this ship but helped me out anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

Like you said, though, you read them all. Afterwards, too, you finally summoned up the courage and/or the energy to get to reading the messages from everyone else you’ve been quietly neglecting. You’ve got worried and sorrowful messages from Tavros and Terezi, and a clueless quip from a well-intentioned Eridan, who does not appear to have been informed of your passing. He’s online when you read it. You contemplate messaging him back and letting yourself pretend you’re alright for a while, but something stays your hand, though you can’t put a name to it.

You have twenty-something messages from Sollux, too, and that makes your throat get tight again with distant grief. He thinks you’ll blame him, of course, and you don’t. Part of you wants to slam shut the top of your computer again and continue to drift around in melancholy nothingness like you’ve been doing, stuck in a rut as you are, but.

You don’t know. You can’t put a name to this feeling yet; it’s stronger than guilt, clearly, considering it has power enough to make you stop and look at the mess you’ve left behind in the wake of your absence. It’s not responsibility either, and god, do you feel a sense of both-- what kind of shitty moirail lets their partner worry in silence for weeks on end?-- but you think, maybe…

It must be some sort of-- some sense of nostalgia, almost, a feeling of being a part of something you don’t quite understand, belonging to a past that’s tangled up with the collective pasts of the people who miss you. It’s watching the past stretch forward into a future that you’re not yet willing to relinquish. It makes sense now, or it seems to for a moment before the bolt of understanding slips through your fingers like sand in an hourglass: you’re essentially a ghost now, right? You died. And _this--_ this is your unfinished business.

Your fingers flutter over the keys.

The safe move, or perhaps the coward’s move, would be at least to wait until daybreak so as to decrease the chances of anybody being awake in the moment to see these, but the gears in your head are turning, and you can’t wait a second longer. You send nearly a dozen _hey_ s and _s0rry_ s as you explain as much and as little as you can get away with, on a case-by-case basis. _s0rry ab0ut my radi0 silence, ive been really tired lately_ will work for someone like Eridan or Nepeta. But Terezi knows you’re dead, so you’re gonna have to break the ghastly news to her, which is to say, ghosts are not only real as shit, but here you are, phantasmal and unworldly. You message Sollux and tell him you’re sorry, you’re so sorry, and it isn’t his fault; you tell him you love him, that you didn’t mean to make him worry this much. You also tell him to fix his _fucking_ sleep schedule given the wild hours his previous messages are from.

 You reach your eleventh person (you have decided it’s for the best that Equius not be informed).

You almost decide it’s best to leave her out, too, and you know you’d be completely within your rights to do just that. This is her fault, after all, isn’t it? If only she hadn’t used her powers to manipulate Sollux, if only she hadn’t caused Terezi to be blinded, if only she hadn’t hurt Tavros, if only she’d never gotten into FLARP in the first place, if only she wasn’t the way she was, if only she wasn’t so lucky, so unlucky, if only she’d never been born at all.

But none of that is the answer, is it?

No, you rest your fingers on the keys and your cursor blinks back at you.

No, you can’t even manage to summon up anger anymore, is the thing, as this unknown trepidation tugs at the corners of your mouth. You _should_ be angry-- you deserve that much, but somehow, _somehow_ , you’re not mad. You don’t put a name to this feeling yet. It’s sad in a certain way, sure, but it’s also something else.

So you send her a message.

 

\-- apocalypseArisen [AA] began pestering arachnidsGrip [AG] at 21:54 --

** AA: ** hey

** AA: ** y0u kept me up last night with y0ur c0nstant pinging

** AA: ** thanks f0r that

 

Not a minute later, you get your 88th message from her.

 

** AG: ** WHAT THE H8LL?

** AA: ** yeah s0

 

You feel a strange twinge, unbidden, and you realize you’re smiling. For the first time since death, at that, you’re finally smiling. How preposterous.

 

** AA: ** I’m g0ing t0 haunt the fuck 0ut 0f y0u

** AA: ** 0u0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so! This is as much as I've already got written for now. When I started typing I honestly didn't know what this was going to be about or even from whose point of view it was going to be (second person is. great for that), and I don't entirely know where this ride's gonna take me. I really don't want to end up abandoning this, so here's to hoping. 
> 
> If you liked this story and want to leave a comment, that would honestly make my day! :) It'd mean a lot to me to know that there actually are people who are interested in this story being finished, but for now, I just hope you enjoyed what I've written so far (or at least didn't Entirely hate it). Until next time.


	3. Chapter 3

Unshockingly, Vriska absolutely lost her fucking shit when you said that. Really, you think it’s fair to say she experienced every stage of grief in the span of five seconds. She blew up at you, naturally, “took back” a number of the nice things she had said about you during her 87-message rant, and you yelled back and forth a bit before mutually blocking each other, because fuck that.

You shake your head recalling it. You honestly have a hard time remembering why you were so mad at her, or really, why you’ve ever been mad about anything, as though there has ever existed a reason worth the energy it takes. You have a feeling she’s going to unblock you sooner or later, and then you’re going to unblock her, and you’re probably going to do this same old song and dance a thousand times before anything ever changes. Such is existence.

But that’s irrelevant now, you think, cramming your husktop into a backpack that is already almost bursting at the seams. It’s irrelevant because you’re going to visit Sollux, so why waste time worrying about that? You’re experiencing a feeling that you could almost call excitement, which is saying something on account of the fact that you’re not alive and shouldn’t be experiencing any feelings whatsoever. But you’re still here, so he’s still your moirail, and he could use someone to cheer him up and pester some sense into him right now. Plus, you two have some theories you want to, uh, test out.

So you sling your backpack over your shoulder and you start the trek towards the city, marching forth with as much pep in your step as you can muster. It’s a bit of a long walk, but the way is familiar, every step well-travelled, and every landmark along the way as much home to you as your own hive. It brings a certain sentimental peacefulness to your heart, a comforting weight in your chest. You must have gone this way hundreds of times, you think. It’s routine.

You eventually reach the communal hive stem he resides in and ride the elevator all the way up to the top floor. You just go ahead and let yourself in. Is he expecting you? Technically. Are you here at the time he thinks you’ll be? Probably not. You consider sneaking up on him to go “boo!”, but you think that’d be too much.

“Sollux?” You call. No answer.

You slide your backpack off onto the nearby loungeplank and get your husktop out.

 

\-- apocalypseArisen [AA] began pestering twinArmageddons [TA] at 20:22 --

** AA: ** s0llux?

** AA: ** im here n0w

** AA: ** i d0n’t really want t0 scare the living daylights 0ut 0f y0u but im already in y0ur hive s0

** TA: ** aa have you ever heard of knockiing

** AA: ** have y0u ever heard 0f l0cking y0ur d00r

** TA: ** ha ha you got me or whatever. iive been #owned from beyond the grave.

** AA: ** if y0u say s0

** AA: ** im in y0ur generic activity bl0ck though

AA: c0me d0wn here?

 

You hear him scoot his chair out from his desk upstairs and shuffle on down with heavy footsteps. He peers out around the corner.

“Aradia?”

“Sollux? Can you see me?”

The way he whips his head to and fro as his eyes dart around the room in search would seem to indicate that he does not, and you feel a crushing wave of disappointment for a moment. But then his eyes lock with yours and you both freeze.

“… _Dude_ ,” is what he ends up saying. You laugh.

“Can you hear me?” You ask.

“Of course I can.”

“That’s two things off our checklist, then.” Two things from your list of theories about what you can do as a ghost, that is. Be seen and be heard. That’s reassuring.

He nearly trips over a game controller on his way over to you, and you roll your eyes as hard as physically possible at the disarray his hive is in. He informs you that you don’t have pupils anymore, which is news to you, because you have not bothered to look in a mirror since you died. You try to do so in his ablution block, and discover that you have no reflection.

He tries to capture your image on camera and on video as you strike a few halfhearted but goofy poses; neither show up. He tries to record your voice, which does come through, though it sounds a little off. He throws a cushion at you and as you brace for impact it flies right through, but he tosses a second for you to catch, and despite a bit of clumsy fumbling, you manage to grab ahold of the second one just fine. You try a few other things out before you get distracted and annoy him into having an impromptu hive cleaning party. (You swear, if you weren’t here to bug him about picking up after himself, he’d absolutely perish. No wonder you’re still here: who else would look after this dork?) You also unload most of the contents of your backpack; you brought a lot of stuff over just to give him, a prime example being the armload of canned food and beverage items you no longer need now that you don’t require nutrients. His mealblock is a whole other can of dirt noodles, and your apparently pupil-less eyes twitch with the effort it takes not to scream what with the state of disarray and disrepair it’s fallen into. You politely shame him into cleaning out his thermal hull while you wash some dirty nutrient consumption vessels in his sink. He eventually puts some music on. It’s fun, honestly, and you tease and rib each other all the while, joking and laughing like you always have. You take a break to play some video games but never get back to work.

You talk for a while. He asks you a lot of questions about being a ghost and what it’s like dying and being dead.  You talk about depression together and how hard it is to carve purpose out of an ultimately pointless existence. You ask him about your other friends and he starts telling a story about some mischief he dragged Karkat into a few days ago. You start to ramble about Vriska.

He’s surprised that you’re not all that mad for about half a second. He apparently had already blocked her on trollian and intends to not speak to her unless he has to. Unsurprisingly, he’s pretty upset about the whole thing. You tell him you’re already thinking about unblocking her.

“Why?” He asks.

“I don’t know,” you say and shrug, and it’s true. You still don’t know how to describe the way you feel about everything, just that you know there’s no running from the inevitable. You want to be angry at her and sometimes you are, but overall, you just feel… tired, and sad, and something else you don’t know how to categorize. “I guess I just don’t care enough to keep a grudge,” you say, which is false, but you don’t know what else to say. You do care. You care a lot more than you should, but somehow a lot less than you wish you did, or maybe vice versa. You don’t know how to articulate any of that, though, and thinking about it just makes you exhausted, so you don’t.

Eventually, you do have to go home. You put it off until you’re sure you’ll be caught out during the morning hours unless you hustle, and even then you linger in the doorway, not wanting to let go of the night.

Sollux hugs you before you leave, and for a moment you close your eyes and let yourself pretend that everything is going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can ghosts hug people? They can in my world, I guess. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed my little arasol chapter, and by little, I mean I think this is my longest chapter so far? I also didn't think cleaning was going to factor in this much, but here we are. 
> 
> Thank you so much to the folks who left kudos on this story. See you guys next time.


End file.
